Chapter 2. Getting Started with Mahara

Now that you have understood some of the potential of Mahara, it's time to get started. The very first thing you are going to do is to register for a Mahara site, log in, and set up your own personal profile and dashboard pages. You will also have your first look at how you receive notifications and manage your Mahara settings.

In this chapter you will:

Register to join the demonstration Mahara site that accompanies this book
Explore the Mahara user interface
Learn how to enter your personal information
Begin to configure your personal profile page
Have a brief introduction to the Mahara text editor
Have a look at the dashboard page
Understand how you can manage your settings and receive notifications

By the end of this chapter, you will have started to set up your own profile page. You will have also had a look at your dashboard page in Mahara and be ready to start adding your stuff.

Registering with a Mahara site

I'm sure you can't wait to get inside a Mahara...

Registering with a Mahara site

I'm sure you can't wait to get inside a Mahara site and have a look around. Luckily, for this book we have created a demonstration site, so you can do just that.

Usually, a Mahara site administrator will provide you with your own username and password, so that you can log in straight away. Sometimes though, to join a Mahara site, you will have to register.

Let's have a look at some of the Mahara sites available on the Internet that you can register to join:

http://maharaforbeginners.tdm.info: This is the demonstration site for this book. Register here to work through the examples in each chapter.
http://foliofor.me: This is a freely available Mahara platform in the cloud. Anyone can register here to set up their own portfolio. A fairly large international community is already using this site.
http://demo.mahara.org: This is a default Mahara installation that always runs on the latest version of Mahara. It is a demonstration site that can be explored by the...

Time for action — registering to the Mahara for Beginners' demo site

So, let's practice registering for a Mahara site:

1. Enter http://maharaforbeginners.tdm.info into your browser's address bar.
2. Click on the Register link found at the bottom of the Login block:
3. Fill in the registration form. Enter your Email address, First name, and Last name.
4. Agree to the terms and conditions if there is a button asking you to do so. Make sure you read them first:
5. Then, click on the Register button at the bottom of the page.
6. On the following page you will see an input box inviting you to give a reason for joining the site. Write a quick description and click on Complete Registration. Hopefully, you will now get an on-screen message telling you that you have successfully registered and to check your e-mail inbox for instructions on activating your account. If not, don't worry, you will get a message on the screen letting you know what went wrong. Then, correct the problem and try again.
7. Now...

Logging in for the first time

If you just registered for the demo site, you will be logged in to Mahara. In the future though, you will need to know how to log in by yourself. By now you should have a username and password, either for the demonstration site or those that have been provided by your Mahara admin in your own Mahara page. We're going to use those details to log in.

Time for action — logging in

Let's find out how to log in to Mahara for the first time with your username and password:

1. Once your account has been registered, you can log in to the site whenever you visit by using the Login block on the home page. Type your Username and Password, and click on Login.
2. If this is the first time you are logging in and your account was created for you by your site administrator, it is likely that you will be asked to change your password. If this is the case, enter your New password twice and click on Submit:
3. That's all there is to it! You have just logged in to Mahara for the first time.

What just happened?

You have just learned how to log in to Mahara.

Logging in is easy, if you can remember your login details. If you are a bit forgetful like me, then don't worry, Mahara provides a useful way of retrieving your username and password. All you need is your e-mail address (let's hope you don't forget that!).

To retrieve your details, just click on the Lost...

Mahara's user interface — finding your way around

One of the beauties of Mahara is that the menu options are laid out very simply. After clicking through the menu options a few times you will find that you instinctively know where the option that you are looking for is located.

A word on Mahara themes

It is important to realize that Mahara is an Open Source software and can be easily personalized and themed. This means you are able to change the visual layout of Mahara — the header section can be configured to have a different logo, layout can be altered, and font size/color can be adjusted (among other things). Theming doesn't affect Mahara content, it affects only the way it looks. For example, the theme for the site http://maharaforbeginners.tdm.info is an adaptation of the Default theme, which is the theme you will begin with:

Let's now explore the Mahara user interface so that you can get used to finding your way around.

The main menu and submenus

The main menu is the first place to look...

A workflow for building your portfolio

You may have already noticed that on your dashboard page (the home page you see when you first log in), there is a three column information block that contains links to different parts of your portfolio. Here is what it looks like:

This dashboard information block is not only useful for navigating but it is also structured to give you some clues about the process that you should go through when building your portfolio.

In this book, you will be first encouraged to create and collect content, then to organize it, and finally to share and create networks.

This book is structured to walk you through each of these stages one by one. We're therefore going to start by adding your first piece of content — your profile information.

Setting up your own profile

One of the first things you will want to do is to add your own information to your portfolio and to make it feel like you own it. In this section, you will see how to do just that. For the following examples, we will be working with Janet Norman of PI Inc., showing you how she has configured her own profile. Why not set up your own profile in the demonstration site as you work through the examples? Let's start by looking at profile information.

Profile information

Later you will set up your own profile page — showing yourself and your knowledge off to others in an attractively personalized way. However, before you do that, you need to add some profile information. Your profile information is the first example that you will see of an artefact (piece of content or stuff, if you remember?) that you can add to Mahara.

You are now going to set up some profile information, from which you can go on to select repeatedly, and use again and again within your ePortfolio....

Time for action — editing your profile

So let's get going and add some details to your profile:

1. Click on the Content button on the main menu.
2. You will notice that Mahara has opened the Content submenu. The Profile tab is selected when you first enter your content space. Let's take a quick look at Janet's profile. You will notice that the About me tab is selected. Janet has already entered her name:
3. Say something about yourself! Scroll down to the Introduction section of the About me page and enter some text. Here is what Janet typed in:
4. Whenever you make any changes, click on the Save Profile button at the bottom of the page. If you don't, you may find yourself losing all your hard work! This can happen sometimes if there is a period of inactivity and you get logged out.
5. Next, click on the Contact information tab to the right of the About me tab.
6. You will see that you are expected to fill out some telephone numbers and addresses. The first thing you should notice is that you...

Time for action — uploading your profile pictures

Let's get a few different profile pictures uploaded to your portfolio:

1. Click on the Profile pictures submenu button under Content.
2. You will notice that to begin with there are no images found — that's because you haven't added any yet. Click on Choose file to find the profile picture you want to upload from your computer or external hard drive (or wherever). Mahara asks that your image is between 16x16 and 1024x1204 pixels, so make sure it is!
3. When you're happy with the image that you have selected, don't forget to add an Image Title for your profile picture before you click on the Upload button.
4. You are allowed to upload up to five profile pictures and you can delete any picture at any point. You have the option to set a default picture — if you do, you should probably choose a fairly sensible one. If you click on Use no default, the default Mahara profile shadow will be shown instead. Janet Norman has uploaded two profile pictures...

Time for action — editing your résumé, goals, and skills

Let's see how to edit your résumé, goals, and skills.

1. Click on the Résumé tab under the Content submenu.
2. The Introduction section asks you to type in a cover letter and some personal information. Type in some information about yourself in this section. What is it that you do? This is about your writing style and how you want to represent yourself — do you want to write formally or informally? Don't forget to click on the Save button immediately after you have entered your information.
3. Now, click on the Education & Employment tab. Use this section to fill in all your past education qualifications. Just click on Add to start filling out a new listing. You should see that you can add details such as the dates of the education placement, its name and address, and details of the qualification you gained there. Here is a listing that Janet entered for her own Master's degree:
4. Do the same for your previous employments.
5....

Your profile page

Now for the exciting bit, your profile page.

One of the most important pages you create in Mahara will be your profile page. Whichever of your other pages other people look at, they are likely, at some point, to come back to your profile page to find out exactly who it is writing and recording all the fascinating stuff they are reading, listening to, and watching. All they have to do is to click on your name or your profile picture wherever they see it and they will be taken straight to your profile page.

Time for action — viewing and investigating your profile page

Let's have a first look at your profile page:

1. Start by clicking on the Portfolio tab in the main menu. By default you will be in the page's section of your portfolio. You will be looking at this section in more detail in Chapter 4, Organize and Showcase Your Portfolio. For now, you will notice that there are already two pages — your Dashboard page and Profile page.
2. Click on the link for your Profile page.
3. Scroll down the page and look at the different sections. Can you see the section for My Pages? This is probably empty at the moment, but as you start adding pages, they will appear here. Similarly, it is unlikely that the My Groups section has any information in it yet. The About Me block in the top left is also looking empty. Here is what Janet's profile page looks like at the moment:
4. Have a look at your wall. Try typing a message directly into the box in the Wall section and click on the Post button. If you are just...

Adding a text box to your profile page

One useful thing you can add to your profile page, or any page that you create in Mahara, is a text box. These are extremely useful for giving meaning to your page. You can include far more than text in the text box. You will use it to put in descriptions or snippets of information that help you to structure your page in a more logical way.

In the following Time for action creating a text box for your profile page section, you will look at how you add a text box to your profile page. Along the way, for the first time, you will encounter Mahara's drag-and-drop user interface for adding blocks to pages — this is very exciting! One of the things that makes Mahara stand out is its flexible framework for creating pages. It is extremely intuitive as you will see, and reflects in some ways how you would create a poster display — taking bits of information such as text and pictures, moving them around until you are happy with their location, and then sticking...

Time for action — creating a text box for your profile page

Let's add a text box to your profile page:

1. In the Pages section of the Portfolio area, click on the button to the right of your Profile page to begin editing it:
2. You will now see your profile page in edit view. It will look something like this:
3. You will notice that you are being encouraged to select different blocks from within a set of six tabs at the top of the screen and drag them down onto your page. Later you will be looking at these blocks and learning how to position them on your page. Right now though, you will be focusing on how to work with the text box. Click into the General tab. You should see this:
4. Click on the text box icon and drag it somewhere onto the space below in the page, to position it amongst the other blocks already present on your page layout. You will see the other blocks moving as you are dragging to make space for the text box. You will also see a dotted gray line showing you where the new...

Time for action — editing a text box by adding a hyperlink

Now let's try formatting some of the text that you have just entered:

1. Open up the text block that you created earlier for editing. You can do this by clicking on the icon that looks a little bit like a cog at the top of the block:
2. You are going to add a hyperlink to the text. Did you notice that the two link icons are grayed out and unclickable? This is because you can't hyperlink to something before you have highlighted it. Do this by clicking and dragging your mouse over the text that you want to hyperlink. Now you should see the two hyperlink buttons in color.
3. Click on the Make Hyperlink button (the one that looks like a chain) to start creating your hyperlink for the word (words) that are highlighted. Janet has chosen to make a link from the word "Mahara" to the Mahara website. You should see a new dialog box similar to the one shown in the following screenshot:
4. You now get the chance to enter your link. Janet therefore...

Time for action — adding an image to your text box

Let's see how you can add an image to a text box in Mahara:

1. Find an image on the Internet that you would like to add to your text box. Janet went straight away to a free images site that she knows — Stock xchng at http://www.sxc.hu. She entered the word e-portfolio into the search box and found some suitable images. She has chosen an image of a man jumping in the air with his portfolio in hand:
Image by Asif Akbar (http://www.sxc.hu/photo/991217)
2. Copy the link of the image. You can usually do this by right-clicking on the image and clicking on Copy image location.
3. Reopen the text box on your profile page that you created earlier and click on the Insert/edit image button.
4. You will see a dialog box pop up. In the Image URL field, paste the location of the image that you copied in step 2.
5. Give your image a relevant Image description. This shows when you hover over the image with your mouse.
6. Select the Alignment, Dimensions, Border...

Your dashboard page

Do you remember, while looking at your profile page, that there was also a Dashboard page available in your pages listing? This dashboard is the second type of special page in your Mahara portfolio.

It is special because it is the page that appears as your home page when you first enter your portfolio — the one related to the Dashboard link on the main menu.

Just as you were able to configure your profile page, you have flexibility and control over your dashboard too. This is great! You can make your dashboard page contain all the links, journals, RSS feeds, and information you want to view when you first enter the site, making your Mahara portfolio feel more personal to you.

You will be looking in more detail at how to configure this very special page and what you might want to put into it, in Chapter 3, Create and Collect Content. For now, let's open up your dashboard and see what it contains.

Time for action — viewing and investigating your dashboard page

It's time to have a look at your dashboard page. Here it goes:

1. Click on the Portfolio tab in the main menu. This time, click on the link to the Dashboard page. This will open up your current dashboard page. The screen should look something like the following screenshot. As you can see, it's quite empty, but already has a welcome message, an information section, and some blocks to show latest pages, forum topics, and activities:
2. Now return to the pages listing by clicking on Portfolio once again or clicking on the back button in your web browser.
3. Click on the page editing button next to the dashboard page listing to start up the page editing view.
4. One thing you'll notice is that you don't have access to the welcome message or the information section to edit them. This is because these are controlled by the site administrator — they have the power to choose what the welcome message says. If you don't want the information...

Settings

This is the place in your portfolio where you can go to fine-tune and personalize your system settings. You can control things such as your password, username, and other options.

Time for action — changing your settings

Let's discuss changing your settings:

1. Click on the Settings button in the control panel menu on the top right of the screen:
2. You will now be on a page called Settings. On this page, you have a number of options available, the first is to change your password. You may feel like you can't remember your old password very well and want to switch to a more memorable one. If you need to, try entering a new password for yourself. Enter your current password along with the new password and a confirmation of your new password.
3. Next, you have the option to change username. Perhaps your current username is too long and you would like to shorten it. Type in a new username for yourself. Ensure that you remember your new username. The username you choose must be available and should not be already taken by another user. Some users might not have this option available depending on how the site administrator has set things up. Janet decided to change her username...

Notifications

Notifications are Mahara's way of letting you know about lots of different events that may occur, and are related to you or your portfolio. You can receive notifications for all sorts of different reasons. It could be that one of your friends has created a new group on the site and wants you to join, or that a journal in a page you've been following has been updated.

To start with, you will receive notifications for actions that take place in all groups, forums, pages, and friend activities. This means you can receive a lot of notifications! If the site is busy, most users opt to use a daily digest.

Of course, you will see how journals and friends work on in Mahara later in this book, but for now let's get used to opening up the notifications page and seeing what's in there.

Time for action — open up your notifications inbox

Let's open up your notifications inbox and have a look around:

1. Click on the button on the control panel menu, which is represented by a letter with a number next to it in the top right of the screen. The number in this link represents the number of unread notifications you have. At the moment Janet doesn't have any notifications and so a zero is displayed:
2. Now, you will be on a page called Inbox. This is the place where you will see all of your messages, just as you would see in a normal e-mail inbox. You can mark messages as read or delete them, as well as filtering them by activity type.

What just happened?

You just found out where all your Mahara notifications can be found and had a look at your inbox for the first time. If you see that icon change from zero to one at any point, you will know you have something to read!

Summary

You have learned a lot in this chapter and really got going with the basics of Mahara. Hopefully, you will now feel like you have a good understanding of some basic concepts in Mahara, including your profile information and profile page. You specifically looked at registering on a Mahara demo site, logging in, navigating, entering profile information, and creating your own profile page. You also looked at notifications and settings.

Now that you've learned about profile pages, let's put some more of your stuff online using files and journals, which is the topic of the next chapter.